


Fictional Deduction

by Amalveor



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Prompt Fill, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 06:09:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amalveor/pseuds/Amalveor
Summary: This was written years ago as a fill for a prompt on the kink meme but never got posted.The original prompt asked for Sherlock making the ultimate deduction and figuring out that he's actually a fictional character.





	Fictional Deduction

They were back in Angelo’s again, only this time, Sherlock was eating as well. With their latest case closed he apparently had time to spend on the many necessary things he usually deemed unnecessary. There had been a candle on the table when they arrived, the usual tea-lights upgraded to standing ones and John could only hope that this wasn’t in honour of their visit. Angelo still insisted on bringing them another of course, lighting it against the first before placing it down, tall and slim beside its shorter, wax dribbled tablemate.

John paused to muse between forkfuls, thinking about the first time they had been there, the circular nature of time, why he had expected anything less than perfect table manners from Sherlock, and the way his life now seemed inextricably linked to that of the man before him. He thought that perhaps, he might like to have been a writer. Not that he had the vocabulary or the style, but he liked to read and he liked to think about things that he himself would find interesting to read. Maybe he’d start to take his blog a bit more seriously. He looked across at Sherlock, about to voice his thoughts, and found the other man staring at him with a peculiar expression on his face. It took John a moment to work out what it was; almost curiosity but with none of the enthusiasm or self-belief of the curiosity of a crime scene. Only an eyebrow raise away from intrigued, it was… Confusion. Foreign though it seemed across those pale features, it was the only thing it could be.

“What’s wrong?” John asked quietly, brushing self-consciously at his face as if he could break Sherlock’s study of it. “Is there something-“

Sherlock’s gaze snapped directly into his own and he waved a hand downward, asking him to be silent. John obeyed reliably, leaving his sentence unfinished and sat still, staring back, knowing better than to disturb the detective’s mind at work.

“It can’t be…” Sherlock said at last, and then grimaced as if he had tasted something unpleasant. “Of course it can. If it’s the only thing that explains all the facts, if all other possibilities have been eliminated...” His eyes had drifted away as he spoke, fixing on some point on the window, but they moved back to John then.

John frowned, lips quirking humourlessly to one side into the dour expression he used when he had no idea what Sherlock was talking about and felt his confused look was getting more wear than it should. “Can’t be what, Sherlock?” He said finally, when it seemed he would not be given any further explanation.

“Hm?” Sherlock murmured. When he was lost in his own thoughts he either seemed to forget John existed or assume he couldn’t possibly be anywhere but right beside him. It seemed that today it was the former, despite the fact that he was staring directly at him.

With a sudden burst of energy, Sherlock leaned across the table to grab John’s good shoulder, “It was you, John. The last time we were here, what did you say to me?”

“Uh…” It wasn’t like Sherlock to be non-specific, and it threw him for a moment. “I said; nice food here, isn’t it? Seen any murderers pass by yet? Uh… it’s okay to be gay… And then I mostly apologised for you knocking people out of your way as we caused havoc running around London.”

He thought it was a fairly accurate run down of the conversation, but Sherlock rolled his eyes and sounded exasperated as he said, “not that. About my brother.”

“Oh, I said… something witty about what sort of parents you must have?”

“I’ve been meaning to tell you to re-examine your definition of wit.” Sherlock said, steepling his fingers under his chin, full detective mode enabled. John shook his head and attempted to give up on that particular conversation by going back to his food, taking another mouthful.

“And that’s not what you said,” Sherlock went on regardless. “Obviously, you weren’t yet aware that he was my brother. If you remember, he introduced himself to you as ‘my arch enemy’, quite correctly of course, and you said to me: ‘people don’t have arch enemies, in real life. Doesn’t happen.’ I went on to ask what people did then have in their real lives and you replied with… something insignificant.” He wrinkled his nose and waved a hand to demonstrate just how unimportant the words had been. John got the impression that Sherlock regarded ninety percent of what he said in much the same way. “But you said that, exactly. You said that people didn’t have arch enemies in real life.”

He left it there, his voice pitched like he was teetering on the edge of brilliant deduction, and waited, as if leading John to follow the clues he had put forward. Of course, as usual, those things which were important data to Sherlock were gobbledegook to him. 

“And this led you to the remarkable conclusion that, as it couldn’t possibly happen in real life, Mycroft can’t be real?” John deadpanned, unable to come up with anything serious.

“Quite,” Sherlock said confidently, accompanying the word with one of his ‘aren’t I fantastic, what would you do without me?’ smirks.

Half way through a swallow, John’s throat seemed to give up its attempt to do so, presumably to allow his body to concentrate on being utterly surprised at this comment, and he found himself choking. Sherlock simply looked on amused and pushed John’s drink a little closer to him as he coughed and spluttered.

“Sorry, what?” he said, when most of his inability to breath had subsided. Sherlock simply widened his smirk a little in acknowledgement of the question and said nothing, waiting for John to understand. He didn’t. “Mycroft,” he began slowly, and Sherlock nodded his encouragement. “Mycroft isn’t real.”

“No.”

“Mycroft is real?” This was stranger than most of their conversations but John was fairly sure of this as fact given that he had met the man and spoken to him on several occasions.

“Mycroft isn’t real.”

“Oh.” John said simply, and reached forwards to lift Sherlock’s glass from the table. He gave it a quick sniff which seemed to greatly entertain the madman sat opposite him. It didn’t smell suspicious, and Sherlock had not drunk nearly enough of it to be having an effect on his mind.

“I would notice if I had been drugged,” the other man pointed out, “and the staff here can be trusted.”

“Is that why you go out of your way to help restaurant owners- so you know they’re not going to poison you?” John wondered aloud, before stopping himself. “No, wait, hang on a minute… Why isn’t Mycroft real?” Clearly he was beginning to be far too used to Sherlock if he could ignore comments like that for any length of time.

“Why don’t arch enemies exist?” He asked, hands still pressed together, elbows propped on the table, his food completely forgotten.

“Because, because they’re silly, they’re unbelievable. But, I mean, clearly they’re real. Or, I suppose they’re not, because he’s not really your enemy, he’s just your brother.” He felt his eyebrows lower with the effort of trying to keep up with the discussion.

“Every day I look out from the windows in Baker Street and see the dull people below milling about their dull lives. I can see it, quite clearly, and yet it’s never occurred to me before now.”

John took a deep breath and remained perfectly calm as he said, “would it kill you, just once, to explain something simply? Without the build-up and the drama, and the inevitable ‘ooh, aren’t I clever’?” 

There. That was much better than shouting at him.

“I don’t know,” Sherlock said, “I’ve never tried.”

John thought he might actually have sounded a little hurt, and he softened, asking the question Sherlock wanted him to. “What have you figured out then?”

He immediately brightened. “Where do arch enemies exist, John?” He asked, revelling once more in the theatre of his deductive reveal.

“In, I dunno, in comic books,” he offered. “But if you’re trying to tell me you’re actually Batman, now is not the time, Sherlock.”

“No,” he agreed with a smirk, “That’s not the sort of revelation one makes over dinner.”

“Have seen you leap from a few buildings though.”

Sherlock frowned. “I’m not sure Batman did a great deal of leaping from buildings.”

“Now, Sherlock? You choose now to demonstrate that you have some knowledge of pop culture?” He stopped, thinking about Batman. Not that he really should have been thinking about Batman. “And actually, Batman does quite a lot of- Sorry, we’re not real because Batman’s not real?”

“Exactly. We are fictional constructs,” he said with authority. “There is no other explanation for it. A difficult problem it may have been, but as always, if enough evidence is available, the conclusion becomes blindingly obvious.”

“Sorry, are you trying to tell me you’ve found God? We should tell those poor Jehovah’s witnesses you were so rude to.”

“Perhaps. Not in the traditional sense of the term, but we certainly have a creator. Though, I would propose that we have been created for entertainment purposes rather than whatever vague moralistic reasons the religious claim were behind God’s creation of humanity. By whom and for whose entertainment I cannot say… Yet.”

“I see.” He said, perfectly calmly, and pushed his plate away just enough that he could prop his elbows up on the table to mirror Sherlock’s pose. “You know, when other people are bored they watch the telly, or read a book. You, apparently come up with elaborate, irrational fantasies that you are a fictional character. Have you had any sort of knock to the head recently?”

He put a hand to Sherlock’s forehead as if to take his temperature or check for lumps but Sherlock swatted it away before he could make any unnecessary medical assessment. Sherlock seemed to be as sane as… well, as sane as John had ever known him be, and if that wasn’t very sane at all then at least his judgement had always been sound.

“John,” Sherlock started, holding John’s hand still by the wrist as he tried to move it back to his side. “have you ever behaved in a way that is completely unusual? Completely unreal?”

“Started living with a mad consulting detective?”

“Exactly,” Sherlock said triumphantly.

“Oh good, at least we’ve established you’re mad.”

Sherlock simply smiled as if there was so much yet left for him to learn. “What...” he began as if about to pose an especially tricky Trivia Pursuit question, “…is Mrs Hudson’s first name?”

“No idea,” John said, and then to clarify that this could in no way be accumulated to evidence in Sherlock’s bizarre theory added. “I’ve never asked her.”

“Of course you haven’t.” He said, pleased. “As a secondary character there isn’t as much fleshing out as there might be for the main characters.”

“Main characters?” John asked, before quickly understanding. “I see. You’re the main character. Course you are, it all makes perfect sense.”

“Quite,” Sherlock said. “And as the main character, it is those closest to me who have the most detail.”

“Or perhaps,” John said sensibly, “they have more detail in your mind simply because you know more about them. God, Sherlock, are we really having this conversation? We’re real. Look, look up something on your phone. What’s the weather like in Bolivia? Why would the weather be like anything in Bolivia if we were in a story? Bolivia wouldn’t even exist!”

“Don’t be absurd. We would of course be part of detective fiction which is rarely set in anything other than the real world. Bolivia exists, but the Bolivia we are aware of, however closely it may mirror that of the real world, is also fictional.”

“Sherlock, we know so many people. We know so many things that an author wouldn’t know.”

“We only know them when we need to know them,” Sherlock said. “I told you that my mind was my hard drive, and it is. I delete information I do not need and maintain only that which might be useful. Maybe it is not that my remarkable intelligence has caused me to use my brain in the most efficient way possible, but because it is convenient for our author. I couldn’t possibly remember the names of all the people I’ve ever met, although I know I would be perfectly capable of it, because an author would have to keep perfect track of everything. I can recall information on poisons, crime, ballistics because these things are easily researched.”

“This is because I let you watch Inception, isn’t it?”

Sherlock grinned at him and if John’s comment was somehow further demonstrating his point. 

“We’re a film then are we?” Sherlock frowned a pained frown at him as if he were a particularly incompetent Scotland Yarder and John sighed. “No? A comic book? You’d be easy enough to caricature. Books? A series of soap-opera style adverts? An actual opera? I’m pretty good at karaoke. Can you speak Italian?”

“Do you know you’re babbling?”

“Yes actually. Do you know you’re not making any sense?”

The other man just smiled knowingly at him and John took a brief moment to think that Sherlock’s facial muscles must get terribly bored swapping between expressions of knowing and disappointed disbelief. “Obviously,” he said, “we’re a part of detective fiction. An adaptation of an earlier version, probably created just before or during what’s known as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction- the 20’s and 30’s. Probably safe to say not originally a film but we might be now.”

“You’re telling me we’re in an Agatha Christie novel?”

They had been talking without eating for so long that one of the waitresses approached them. She made an elaborate ‘have you finished?’ gesture and John smiled and nodded, moving his arms so she could collect their plates.

“Firstly,” Sherlock continued, keeping his elbows where they were on the table and leaving the waitress to work around him, “there was more than one writer producing novels during that particular literary movement and secondly, it would rather self-important of an author to include themselves in their own creation. We know of Agatha Christie, so she cannot be our creator.”

“So, we’re a modernisation of characters from a novel or novels by an author writing at the time of Agatha Christie?”

“Excellent, you follow.”

“No, not a bit.” John said. “Why exactly are we a modernisation?”

Sherlock sighed a weary sigh, as if no one in the world understood him, which of course they didn’t. “A number of reasons. Rather than stretch your attention span, I shall give you the brief list. The decoration in the flat, your army and medical training, our meeting, Mrs Hudson, and our front door.”

“Our front door?”

“Quite.”

“Sherlock, I- What? What has our front door got to do with…” he trailed off into a flabbergasted incredulous silence.

Sherlock’s lips twitched as if preparing to smirk before they were distracted by the chirping of his phone on the table.

“It’s Lestrade,” he said, in his tone which ended all manner of conversations outright. He pushed his chair away from the table and read the text message quickly.

“But I thought…” John started, not quite sure where he expected to finish.

“No you didn’t.” he answered with a smile. “Come on. We’ve a robbery to deal with.”

“But I thought…” John said again, standing to leave, “I thought you thought we weren’t real?”

“I’m almost certain we’re not,” Sherlock said matter-of-factly, amusement battling with an urgency to leave in his voice.

“But… Well… If it were true, which I don’t believe for a second it is- I think either you’ve lost it or you’re playing some stupid mind game with me in the name of research. That’s it isn’t it?”

Sherlock looked at him with an expression that said he wished he’d pull himself together and stop wittering.

“And even though I know you’re talking rubbish. If you weren’t, shouldn’t we… do something about it?”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Rise up, rebel?”

“Those things suggest some element of free will.” He paused to see if John was following. He wasn’t. Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Which,” he carried on, “is precisely what I’m suggesting we don’t have”

“Then, how are we having this conversation?”

He ignored him. “Get your coat, John. We have a crime scene to get to. Robbery.“

“You think Lestrade’s calling us to distract us?” he asked as Sherlock nodded to Angelo and stepped out the door, deliberately leaving John three paces behind.

Sherlock turned to raise his eyebrows knowingly before setting off at full pace down the dark street.

“Oh shut up,” John called after him, “you know you’re talking rubbish.”


End file.
